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RE: press for cygwin


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Larry Hall (RFK Partners, Inc) [mailto:lhall@rfk.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 31, 2001 7:30 PM
> To: Mark Bradshaw; 'cygwin@cygwin.com'
> Subject: RE: press for cygwin
> 
> 
> At 10:35 AM 8/31/2001, Mark Bradshaw wrote:
> >Hmm...  Should I paint a bulls eye on my chest here.  Eh.  Why not.
> >
> >Couple of quick notes on the thread.  
> >
> >1)  Complete agreement with Jonathon Merz on the WinZip 
> thing.  Going to bz2
> >just to thwart WinZip doesn't seem like a good use of 
> energy.  Unfortunately
> >at the time I wrote the article bz2 wasn't in use for the 
> packages.  WinZip,
> >being the most popular zip tool for Windows, seemed the 
> obvious choice for
> >unzipping the cygwin packages.  You wouldn't believe how 
> long it takes to
> >get an article printed. :(
> 
> 
> Just so everyone is clear (in case there still is some 
> ambiguity on this
> subject in this thread), discouraging the use of WinZip is 
> *not* the root
> of some insidious plot.  There's a good reason.  That reason is 
> WinZip doesn't understand facilities and conventions of Cygwin (like
> symbolic links, mounts, etc).  As a result, things installed 
> with WinZip
> are very likely to be broken when done.  While that's the 
> plight of the 
> person adopting the wrong install procedure, it leaves a bad 
> impression
> with the would-be user and probably generates some email to the list.
> We see plenty of this kind of email now.  So the we strongly 
> discourage 
> the use of WinZip as a result.  It is not a robust 
> installation procedure
> for Cygwin and we'd like to avoid people trying to use this 
> approach, for
> their benefit and ours.  Changing to bzip2 format files would do this,
> since the Cygwin installer (setup.exe) can handle bzip2 files just as
> readily as gzip.  Of course, some day WinZip will add bzip2 
> file support
> and we'll be right back to to square one again! ;-)

Why not then just generate files named ".cgw" instead of ".tar.bz2", and let
cygwin setup.exe know that? Then WinZip will most surely *not* be able to
naturally open these files (neither now or in the future) and this whole
discussion will be closed, as well as any WinZip-related thread.

Note that not all packages should use the new suffix; only essential ones
(like cygwin itself) so that the burden on package developers would not be
too bad: after all, once you've installed the basic cygwin parts using
setup.exe, I doubt you will go back to WinZip! :-)

Best regards,

	Bernard


--------------------------------------------
Bernard Dautrevaux
Microprocess Ingenierie
97 bis, rue de Colombes
92400 COURBEVOIE
FRANCE
Tel:	+33 (0) 1 47 68 80 80
Fax:	+33 (0) 1 47 88 97 85
e-mail:	dautrevaux@microprocess.com
		b.dautrevaux@usa.net
-------------------------------------------- 

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